ApologetiX gets their unusual name from the word "apologetics" which means "the defense of the Christian faith." It's based on the Greek word for defense, apologia, which is in the original text of this Bible verse from the Apostle Peter:

1 Peter 3:15
"But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer (or defense or "apologia") to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect."

When a person is called an apologist these days, he could be defending a number of ideas. If you like soccer and you're trying to convince someone that soccer is a great game, you could be called a "soccer apologist." But the original apologists were the early Christians who were trying to defend their faith to outsiders (the Romans, for example) who thought they were a cult and were spreading unsubstantiated rumors about them.

When we picked the name back in 1992, it was because Christian apologetics was really important to us. As ApologetiX lead singer J. Jackson says:

"Although I went to 12 years of religious school (Grades one through 12) and attended church faithfully, participated in choirs, etc., before I became a born again Christian, I didn't have a clue as to exactly 'why I believed what I believed.' When atheists or agnostics or cultists wanted to debate with me, I'd run away.

"Then I started reading the Bible and really, really researching things, and I discovered that there is a whole lot of evidence to back it up. There's a whole lot more to the story, but the point is that I wanted to be able to help others know 'why they believe what they believe.' So we chose the name ApologetiX, adding the "X" on the end to make it look more modern and to ensure we had a name that nobody else had ever used. We liked the name ApologetiX because it could be used with a "the" in front to make it sound like a '60's/'70's vocal group ("The ApologetiX," the Stylistics, the Dramatics, etc.) or a without a "the" to make it sound like a modern rock group ("ApologetiX," Anthrax, etc.)

Plus, starting with an "A" puts our name near the top of the alphabetical lists on the Net, in stores, etc., too (Ha ha ha!)